Do All Psychiatrists Have ADHD?
According to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders, ADHD is a neuropsychiatric condition characterized by problems with organization, sustaining attention, procrastination, daydreaming, hyperactivity, restlessness, and impulsivity.
I would like to propose that the entire Psychiatric Establishment is rife with these characteristics, and to prove this I will go through them one by one.
1) Organizational Difficulties: Without mentioning how difficult it is to get an appointment with a shrink that fits YOUR schedule, I would like to point out that psychiatry, in general, is attempting to organize society like Darwin organized animal species. I.E.: "This man has these mental qualities and is capable of doing this". But the brain is dynamic, not static; it is always evolving and changing and therefore it is impossible to attach a label to it, categorize it, and give it a permanent place in society. Our minds are not building blocks for use in societal architectural experiments; that is like building with cards, if one person changes their mind the whole construction falls apart... unless you can prevent intelligent people from changing their minds... but as the old Spanish proverb goes, “A wise man changes his mind, a fool never does”.
2) Sustaining Attention: Do I even need to address this? If the psychiatric Establishment could pay attention and listen to people's problems then they might actually come up with a cure. Instead they just listen for an hour or two and give you pills so that you will stop annoying them because they have more important people to listen to... for a short period of time.
3) Procrastination: Sure, Doctors have been meaning to find a cure since the invention of psychiatry, but now they just put it off to a later date. "Take these pills and we will eliminate the symptoms, but not the underlying problems that caused them". Freud listened to all his patients and had sex with most of them. Whether it was the listening or the sex that cured them no one can say, but at least he didn't just connect the dots between symptoms and pills.
4) Daydreaming: This has a two part answer, on the one hand doctors are daydreaming if they think they can get all of humanity to act, talk, think, and reason in the same manner. And two, 90% of the time you are at your shrink's office the doctor is daydreaming and writing notes, pretending to listen. Secretly they are thinking, "Can we just skip to the part where I give you pills and schedule your next appointment? I have sushi I want to order when you leave."
As for the rest of the diagnoses I think it is clear that the psychiatric establishment is rampant with mental disorders and they should all just give up, go back to delivering pizza or stripping, and perhaps start prescribing themselves Xanax to avoid thinking about how they're going to pay off their medical school loans.
PS: Don't ever take medical advice from someone who is in debt! Do a credit check on your shrink before you pick-up your prescription.
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Comments
Do All Psychiatrists Have
While I realize there's a fair bit of leeway in terms of what we feel we can discuss on TalkingDrugs, this reeks of a personal agenda. I read the title of the article and enjoyed the picture, but the rest was incredibly disappointing. Having noted your anger or desire to be witty, you provide absolutely no basis for your sweeping condemnation of the entire psychiatric profession. The link between the broad indicators of ADHD and your personal hatred of psychiatrists: I don't see it, or at least not how you couldn't just irrationally draw those parallels to anyone who you dislike with some imagination.
What really threw me off mid-rant was that you suddenly express that if only psychiatrists paid some attention and listened, they might come up with a "cure". This doesn't seem to fit in very well with the argument made throughout that trying to categorize all individuals and make them 'normal' is wrong and hardly possible.
Psychiatrists are trained medical specialists. Neurology isn't fictional. Yes, the western world may be overmedicated, but that hardly means that all psychiatrists are bungling idiots and medication simply doesn't work. If the attack was specifically directed toward those who are overdiagnosing kids with ADHD, the point wasn't made particularly well. On a platform where we discuss issues such as addiction, I'm assuming you understand and can accept the neurological basis of addiction. I suppose I'm wondering where you draw the line. Which disorders do not merit medical attention or rather in your opinion should not be receiving so much of it. If medication is simply masking the real problem or at least postponing dealing with the root of it, when is this the case?
Checklist Approach
While the writing is obtuse and rife with abuse, it is not meant to be a serious indictment of the psychiatric profession but rather an attempt to ridicule the more recent "checklist" approach to psychiatric diagnosis.
The DSM now allows doctors to diagnose mental illnesses and prescribe medication just by going through a simple checklist, thereby minimizing the actual "work" involved in treating a patient.
Of course this is not true of all psychiatrists, but it is happening far too often that a person goes into their psychiatrist, recites the things on the checklist (by now it is common knowledge what one must say to get a positive diagnosis), and they walk out with a prescription, sometimes even on the same day.
This is the reason I wrote it in a checklist format; so I can just run through the list and discredit the psychiatric profession without even thinking about or researching it - much like what happens when you get an instant prescription - you are just being written off, just like I write off the psychiatric profession without consideration.
The article is facetious and is not an academic attack of psychiatry, it is an attack on the idea that life can be put on pause via the use of a pill - instead of confronting the unique underlying issues and discussing them in detail.
You, much like the mythological psychiatrist I've described, have gone through my article using a checklist approach instead of looking at the entire piece in a comprehensive, holistic way. This is exactly the mentality I am writing about; seeing the forest for the trees. You are missing the overall picture I have created and, above all, you completely ignored the format.
-Jeff